


Am Parbh

by philomel



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Dark, M/M, Missing Scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-11-05
Updated: 2011-11-05
Packaged: 2017-10-25 17:53:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 825
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/273101
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/philomel/pseuds/philomel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam, at the turning point.</p><p><span class="small">Set during “All Hell Breaks Loose, part 2.”</span></p>
            </blockquote>





	Am Parbh

It's a scrap of paper and it needs throwing away, but he holds on. Holds on, holds on. Singsongs the need of it in the rocking of his fingers, canting like a ship at sea. Lost, lost, lost. It loses layers under his sweat, thins out, goes gray with the grit of skin cells. It will tear soon. The signature will bleed off. One or the other, one before, which one first? He stamps his fingers into the ink and pushes them into his mouth, sucks like a baby.

"Sucks to be you."

It's not funny. He says so. It's another dream, but without the yellow eyes. Without yellow at all. It's all purple, even the skin. And gray, that won't absorb the purple, won't cut in half the red or the blue. It's not the color of death. Mouse gray, frantic, fidget gray; still alive.

The girl who was death pokes at the line of dust that squiggles an inch from the walls, around the room. Wriggles, like dust mites move underneath. When she breaks the line, it reforms, and she says, "Hunh." Tests it again, once more is twice to prove the theory.

"It isn't salt." He doesn't ask.

Ava puts it in her mouth and her tongue wiggles out, gray and not pink. Not even red, though something drips from her mouth, and he watches it drool down her chin, before she spits. After, the line dries on her chin like ash. It seems to move.

As he stares at her, her head suddenly lolls toward her shoulder and her eyes wheel to the right, far into their sockets, then circle back, keep wheeling and circling as if on a pendulum. His stomach churns, but when he tries to back away, his limbs stick in their place, heavy and impossible. She laughs, before he wakes.

The room spins like a windmill. Dust clings to the sheets, clings to his clothes, clings to the hairs in his nostrils and over his eyes. When he breathes, it's all he breathes, before the oxygen, before the carbon. He hangs on the inhale, swings his feet out over the edge. Kicks, kick, kicking out over the floorboards, waiting for them to creak and give. Under his weight, the floor seems to push up, hold him. He holds himself, wrist to fingers, fingers to wrist. He rasps like paper. Thin and bruised. His throat is dry, his eyes dry. Everything creaks and shuffles on him and the room winces at the sound.

It's too quiet, too gray. He wonders if he died, and laughs. It burns his throat. His back burns more, slow prickling, itching and ache.

As he undresses, the receipt falls out, disturbs fine motes of dust on the floor. Where he picks it up, his fingers rest into dimples formed by fingers smaller than his. Gray like charcoal, smudge of a _D_. And he wonders where his brothers is, wonders why he left him sleep so long to stiffen up and dry out like this.

He's been deserted like a ghost town. It's not funny. Only it is, a little. Only it isn't so much, so it is. He whines when he can't reach his back, can't see the wound. Almost goes around in circles, almost cries his curses in frustration. When Dean should be here, could see to these wounds, could be here to see him fumble. Would stop him, would get the bandage right, and centered. Lines of crisscrossing, adhering, skin pulling and fingers. Fingers pushing back all the gray.

It's that time of spring when the green of everything grows out over the dirt of winter. But you'd never know it. He scrubs a line over the window, and it removes a layer, but the grime won't budge. He tries a nail to test his theory, and all he gets is a dirty nail. He wipes it on the bedclothes and retries the mirror.

Some gauze shreds, flaps where it frays. Moves in the air, like this isn't the stillest air he's ever felt. Keeps moving as he keeps breathing. Flutters to the floor too slowly when he rips it off. Reaching back, he touches the mirror, strokes the reflection of his wound. False touch, poor facsimile. He holds on, holds onto the mirror, kneads his fingers into dust that dampens with sweat, slips like grease. He goes numb stuck like this, so numb it's almost like sleep.

He can't be sure he's awake until Dean finds him.

Even then, after that, after everything, he gets up each day, breaking through a fog of faded dreams that resettle no matter how hard he tries to shake them free.

He grips his brother a little tighter these days, stays in bed until the light opens his eyes. Green-gold flecks in them, a measure away from microscopic. A skip of a measure away. He holds on and waits for them to blink out.

**Author's Note:**

>  _At the north-western tip of the Scottish mainland is a wild, empty place, called in Gaelic Am Parbh — the Turning Point. What it turned towards, or away from, is unclear, or perhaps it is many things, including a man's destiny._  
>  ~ Jeanette Winterson, _Lighthousekeeping_


End file.
